information technology

Industry analysts say the technology sector needs to brace for a tough quarter and year. There's no longer any doubt about the U.S. being in a recession. The questions at this point are how deep it will be and how long it will last.

As consumers tighten their wallets, so will businesses tighten IT budgets. Computer sales are falling and sales of other products such as communications equipment and software are expected to slow, according to a report released Tuesday by Forrester Research.

Hewlett-Packard Co. surprised Wall Street on Tuesday by saying its earnings will be slightly above analysts' expectations, going against the grain as other technology bellwethers have slashed forecasts and posted weak results in the sagging economy.

Its shares climbed more than 12 percent in morning trading.

According to research from IDC, a provider of market intelligence for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets, by 2011, the digital universe will be 10 times the size it was in 2006. "The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe: An Updated Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth Through 2011" highlights several findings that will affect individuals and business around the world in the years to come, such as:

* At 281 billion gigabytes (281 exabytes), the digital universe in 2007 was 10 percent bigger than originally estimated.

A disk which a tabloid said carries personal details on some 100,000 serving British military personnel is missing, the Ministry of Defense said Friday.

The military acknowledged a report in The Sun newspaper that contractor EDS lost track of a portable hard drive, but said it could not comment on the claim that it contained names, addresses, passport numbers and driver's license information of service personnel along with data on 600,000 potential recruits.

The reliance of restaurant chains and retail stores on outside companies to handle credit-card processing and other information-technology functions is partly to blame for a rash of consumer data breaches over the last few years, according to data sleuths at Verizon Communications Inc.

Even a chain with thousands of restaurants might have only 100 employees in information technology, so it uses outside vendors for many IT functions, said Bryan Sartin, director of the investigative response team at Verizon Business.

Yes, says Google CEO Eric Schmidt. "Cloud computing is the story of our lifetime. Eventually all devices will be on the network," he told an audience of software developers at a conference of IBM's business partners.

Dell and Ingram Micro, two of the biggest computer vendors, warned Tuesday that demand for information technology was weakening, adding to worries that the crisis on Wall Street would hurt corporate and consumer spending.

Neither company mentioned the financial sector, but they were the first major U.S. technology companies to warn investors since Lehman Brothers collapsed, Merrill Lynch was sold and American International Group said it would need a huge loan to survive.

Software as a service has come far in a few years, adding new functionality and depth. In time, say a pair of technology researchers, users will move beyond SaaS to "cloud computing," the delivery of IT and business functionality in a utility environment.

In just a few years, Software as a Service (SaaS) has moved rapidly beyond its initial point-solution "outsourced application function" phase to become an important source of broadbased business functionality and competitive advantage.

Spam, one of the most annoying features of the Internet age, is celebrating a milestone.

In the spring of 1978, someone sent a note advertising a new computer system to the addresses of about 600 people on Arpanet, the government-designed precursor to the Web.

The unsolicited message sparked an immediate outcry. "This was a clear and flagrant abuse of the directory!" one user on the electronic list wrote.

This was the first of billions of spam e-mails sent over the next 30 years at a rate that has grown astronomically.